


Lying In The Dirt

by brasspetal



Series: The Nameless Quiet [2]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Almost Confessions, Developing Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2018-11-10 01:17:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11116842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brasspetal/pseuds/brasspetal
Summary: These are gone days, lost days, dog days.





	Lying In The Dirt

**Author's Note:**

> This is the second part in Daryl's pov but both parts can be read separately. I'm planning to do more.

These are gone days, lost days, dog days.

There’s a painful delight to the beating sun on his face and he wraps up the raw warmth in memory. Daryl doesn’t much care for summers. More often than not, summer has always felt like he was trying to crawl through a bed of wet blankets. Daryl didn’t much care for _anything,_ if he was being honest and he’s always honest. People can pretend they want honesty but they are always waiting on the lie.

Others would shuffle in the other direction when he’d start to speak, as if his words were meaningless, less than nothing _. Now Rick_ , he’d look at Daryl as if he understood. He’d keep those silences close. He’d even poke the abyss by asking questions. It’s satisfying that there’s one person, in the many he’s met, that he hadn’t scared off yet. One person in the many, that assigns meaning to his life.

When it was the two of them in the woods, in the quiet dark, he wasn’t less than nothing.

He’d sleep on his bed of leaves, skin snakes before the sun rose and he was never judged. Rick would eat with him in the silence and like wolves they would scavenge in the brush.

It was something Daryl looked forward to the most. These trips, these excursions they’d never plan but just _do._ They’d glance at each other, suffocating in Alexandria and they’d just head towards the gate.

There’s something to lying in the dirt and looking up at the stars before sleep. He’s never been much for words or pretty things but he thinks this comes the closest to fulfillment. Daryl would have laughed cruelly long ago, if you had told him that this was something he’d experience with Rick Grimes.

His chest was always full when they’d arrive back to Alexandria. He didn’t know what to name it, the thing that lingered at the bottom of his throat. Perhaps, it was all the words he wasn’t able to push out. He thinks most things are better if you can’t name them. The nameless camaraderie, the nameless woods and the nameless quiet.

It’s been happening more often. The trips to the woods, but they never comment on it. He wasn’t about to. It just _was._

They keep the fire small and their movements quiet. There's nothing or no one in the woods to find them. He can breathe better in the wild.

Rick opens his mouth to speak but then decides against it. Daryl watches Rick figure out the right words to tumble out into the open.

“How long have we been doin’ this?” Rick questions and his eyes find his beyond the firelight.

“I ain’t keepin’ a calendar or nothin’” Daryl says and tosses a small twig into the flames.  He felt unusually frustrated. This _wasn’t_ something they talked about.

Rick ruminates towards the ground as he often did.

“But why?” Is all Rick says.

Daryl wasn’t about to entertain him with an answer. 

 _Why_ was it that everyone had to assign a goddamn reason to everything? They should just let things be.  

They don’t speak for the rest of the night and the morning is filled with tension as taut as a bowstring. The way Rick is looking at him when they’re packing their things up, made him glance the other way. There’s a new intensity to his stare and Daryl couldn’t handle that. Not right now.  He felt disoriented, irritable, and pretty damn tired.

“Daryl….” Rick says and Daryl felt as if the trees were going to crash down on him.  

“Let’s go.” Daryl throws over his shoulder, as he heads towards the pathway back to Alexandria.

He could hear Rick’s boots crunching against the dried dirt. It should feel like it always does, it should feel like home.

How long has Daryl Dixon loved Rick Grimes? He couldn’t really tell you. He just knew it one day and like all things, it stuck inside him like a needle under the skin. It took him a long time to reconcile it but there it was, walking behind him, crunching in the brush. All the meanings, all the reasons.

Rick finally catches up and walks shoulder to shoulder with him. “I’d like to keep comin’ out here.” Rick says.

Daryl's thoughts recede into abstract senseless patterns. He nods once, in the usual way that not many pick up on, except _him._

Daryl thinks that one day when they’re both sitting by a dying fire, he’ll tell him about the things that he stores within himself. He’ll tell him about all the pieces he’s given to Rick until the sun rose above the trees. There would be no expectations. He would just give him what he could never give anyone else. The last gleaming puzzle piece to the creature that is Daryl Dixon.

Alexandria waits for them like an unknown and neither one of them make a move to head there. They claim the little time they had left with the familiar silence and Rick lightly presses his shoulder to his.


End file.
